About me

BACKGROUND + CAREER SO FAR (THE VAIN BIT)

Picture the opening credits of The Office. That’s what my first proper job looked like. A grey industrial park in Wembley, 90 minutes away from my house share, getting paid what worked out as £2.10 an hour after the cost of getting there. Inside, though, I was thrilled. I was getting paid to write. The job was was for a small jewellery and gifts website where a completely run-of-the-mill necklace called ‘Infinity’ was the bestseller by far. (It had to be good copy and SEO-alchemy, because it certainly wasn’t the necklace.) I liked it there. But £2.10 isn’t sustainable, nor is taking a day off every two weeks to sign on. So I was delighted when months later, I got a call. One of the magazines I had interned at during a uni break, gave me a break.

It’s quite interesting to write about the ins and outs of childbirth when you’re only 23.

I was junior digital writer at Mother & Baby, part of a large magazine publishing house.
This was when print magazine teams were large and digital teams were small – I was one of two. We had to convince people that digital was not just a side issue, or a nuisance. We championed it softly and gradually we created more space for the work to be done. We got an SEO expert in and I learnt a lot. I ran little sessions with the print team on how to write for online and edit print content for the web, alongside my main job of writing the copy for the digital audiences across all channels: website, email newsletters and social.

I also started moonlighting at heat magazine. I would finish my job at Mother & Baby then go down two floors to do evening shifts, sourcing and banging out news stories every 20 minutes. Rihanna’s boobs featured a lot. I also wrote about sex appeal for Women’s Health and abortion clinic buffer zones for Stylist. I went on holiday to Philadelphia with my new salary and wrote a city film guide for Empire magazine.

I worked my way to digital editor and realised one of my favourite bits of the job was collaborating with the commercial team to come up with campaign ideas to pitch to brands. I liked the problem-solving element. The publishing house named me a ‘Rising Star’ award at its swish yearly awards.

After a few years, I got the opportunity to step up and be the lead on something different somewhere else, so I took it. I moved to a marketing agency where I oversaw the digital magazine app of a major supermarket chain and got my first proper taste of creative direction. I loved booking and working with food stylists and photographers. I curated six-month editorial schedules and worked with a team of web and app designers to produce multiple issues simultaneously. There was a lot of editing, rejigging and devising a good workflow to not drive us all mad.

From the agency in London, I would go up to Bradford to meet with the client regularly for sign off (and compromise!) on the front cover, themed issues and features. I worked with SEO and customer data to create and commission the content for each month’s issue – all of it had to work across desktop, iPad and other devices. There were written pieces and short-form videos, how-tos and Vimeos – big at the time, promise – and interactive elements. I worked with a tiny camera crew to produce and direct recipe videos with professional but not camera-trained chefs: a steep learning curve how to work with talent, I tell you. Under my editorship in 2013, we won Customer Magazine of The Year at the Digital Marketing Awards for our content and got a sparkly sheet of glass to take back to the office. The agency let me have a month off unpaid and I went on a USA road trip. One of the reasons I’ll always feel fond of that agency.

I liked the video side of that job and wanted to do more. So two years after I started, I left to join a fashion education tech start-up as producer. It was a true start-up. One colleague was so young that when I mentioned that the sight of her skateboarding in the office was ‘very Nathan Barley,’ she said ‘What’s that?’ There was energy, the pace was faster than anything I’d known. We thought of ideas and delivered them in two days, one day, that evening. I built on my storytelling, building concepts and developing learning arcs that the paying user would find compelling.

There I honed my creative skills: ideating, pitching and writing scripts for partnerships with brands like Vogue Italia. And my practical skills: scheduling and pre-production, directing high profile talent, presenting Facebook Lives and directing crew. I loved it when my boss called me unflappable. I liked creating a calm, happy and productive atmosphere on set. I worked with brands like Nike and i-D magazine, and got to interview all sorts of impressive fashion people on and off camera, like the stylist behind Beyoncé’s iconic Lemonade video, designer Gareth Pugh and the late Judy Blame.

More work on the side included copywriting for John Smedley and Rolex.

In all my jobs, the key has been to find that sweet spot between the data and the consumer: hitting the targets you’ve got while making something totally engaging.

Now I’m shoving all that experience together and going it alone, helping brands large and small with words or video – whether that’s a one off piece of content, a few days of copywriting, or the end-to-end production of an idea from concept to edit.

Have I convinced you? Get in touch. (Bored to tears? Give me some feedback.)